Slashdot Mirror
WW2 Pigeon Code Decrypted By Canadian?
Albanach writes "At the start of November Slashdot reported the discovery of a code, thought to be from the Second World War, found attached to the leg of a pigeon skeleton located in an English chimney. Now a Canadian by the name of Gord Young claims to have deciphered the message in less than 20 minutes. He believes that the message is comprised mostly of acronyms."
...squabbling about this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not hard to "crack" a code if you have access to the relevant code book
It was not a "code book" in any traditional sense of the term, at least in a crypto context — the message, according to this solution, was simply heavily-abbreviated plaintext.
It seems that "txtspk" actually originated from pigeon messaging :)
I don't believe this is a correct "interpretation" of the message, as it is too generic. Nothing contained in the message is of any use whatsoever. "Hit Jerry’s right or reserve battery here", "Troops, panzers, batteries, engineers, here", "Counter measures against panzers not working", "Go over field notes", "Found headquarters infantry right here"
What good is any of that? Where is "here"? There would have to be precise coordinates or grid numbers to indicate exactly what is where.
The other question is where would the pigeon be delivering this message to? All the way back to some headquarters in Britain is where. In that case the context of the message is even less useful, especially considering there would be a several hour delay before the message could be delivered all the way from France to Britain.
More information on these sites, includes the various "decoded" phrases.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/16/world-war-2-pigeon-code-cracked_n_2311364.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248818/Hit-Jerrys-panzers--code-dead-wartime-pigeon-cracked.html
Better known as 318230.
The alleged decoded message:
AOAKN - Artillery Observer At "K" Sector, Normandy
HVPKD - Have Panzers Know Directions
FNFJW - Final Note [confirming] Found Jerry's Whereabouts
DJHFP - Determined Jerry's Headquarters Front Posts
CMPNW - Counter Measures [against] Panzers Not Working
PABLIZ - Panzer Attack - Blitz
KLDTS - Know [where] Local Dispatch Station
27 / 1526 / 6 - June 27th, 1526 hours
I don't know about WWI/WWII acronyms but it seems unlikely that they were all exactly five letters long and had letter frequency like this (look at all those Qs, Xs, and Zs). I do know that ciphertext is usually written in groups of five letters to provide spacing without giving clues about the spacing of the plaintext. Also, there is a bit of stuff in the middle of the page below the ciphertext (cropped out of most photos), which if I remember right was used for metadata about what code was used.
This sounds like a case of someone looking at random stuff and trying a bit too hard to make sense of it.
It seems that "txtspk" actually originated from pigeon messaging :)
I believe it's called pidgin messaging. *ducks*
Ezekiel 23:20
I really don't think they were trying to tell them to drink their Ovaltine.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
No ducks. Pigeons.